[3] To my mind a slight unsoundness creeps into Chap. XVI, and here both Fabre and Gourmont seem to me to go astray in considering the insect as a separate creature, i. e. a creature cut off from its larva or cocoon life. Surely the animal may be supposed to exist while in its cocoon or larva, it may reasonably be supposed to pass that period in reflection, preparing for precisely the acts of its desire (as for example an intelligent young man might pass his years in a university under professors, awaiting reasonable maturity to act or express his objections). The larva has its months of quiet, precisely the necessary pre-reflection for the two days' joy-ride of exterior manifestation, amours, etc., its _contemplatio_, or what may be counted as analogous, passing in its cell. The perfection and precision of its acts, being, let us say, proportionate to the non-expressive period. Having spent God knows how long in that possibly monotonous nest, it seems small wonder that the insect should know the pattern by heart. Small wonder, that is to say wonder not incommensurate with the general wonder of the whole process.--E. P. [4] Vide translator's postscript. CHAPTER XX TYRANNY OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM _Accord and discord between organs and acts.--Torses and sacred scarab.--The hand of man.--Mediocre fitness of sexual organs for copulation.--Origin of "luxuria."--The animal is a nervous system served by organs.--The organ does not determine the aptitude.--Man's hand inferior to his genius.--Substitution of one sense for another.--Union and rôle of the senses in love.--Man and animal under the tyranny of the nervous system.--Wear and tear of humanity compensated by acquisitions.--Man's inheritors._ It is a universal belief that nature or God, in their wisdom, have made the corporal organs in the best possible form: perfection of the eye, of the hand, of the paw-jaw of the mantis, of the sexual apparatus of man, of the bird or the scarab, the furnishing tarses of hymenoptera, the beaver's tail, the grasshopper's hams, the cicada's tambourine. It is sometimes true and very often false. It happens that there appears an exact concord between the organ and the act which it is to perform; but it happens also, and that not rarely, that the organs seem in no way fashioned for the deed they must accomplish: most of them are indeed chance tools, with which the creature manages, as he can, the acts which he wants to, or should, do.